Synopsis

A match-up made in tough-guy heaven -- Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro star in Killer Elite. Based on a shocking true story, Killer Elite pits two of the world's most elite operatives - Danny, an ex-special ops agent and Hunter, his longtime mentor - against the cunning leader of a secret military society. Covering the globe from Australia to Paris, London and the Middle East, Danny and Hunter are plunged into a highly dangerous game of cat and mouse - where the predators become the prey.

January is typically a really bad month for the home market, and it is usually even worse for Blu-ray. Not only are there not many hits coming out, but those that are being released tend to be films that are better suited to DVD than Blu-ray (middling hits, dramas, etc.). This is certainly the case with this week's new releases. Leading the way on the Blu-ray sales chart was Ides of March, a political drama, with 116,000 units / $2.08 million. Its opening Blu-ray share was 39%, which is better than expected for the genre.
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Like it was on the DVD sales chart, there were three new releases to top the Blu-ray sales chart, although they finished in a slightly different order. Moneyball still led the way with 467,000 units / $9.74 million giving it an opening week Blu-ray share of 44%, which is excellent for a drama.
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It was a good news / bad news weekend and the box office. First the bad news. Only one of the four new wide releases made any real impact and this led to a 16% drop-off from last weekend to just $99 million. The good news is that's still 4% higher than the same weekend last year. Year-to-date, 2011 is still behind 2010 by 3% at $7.99 billion to $8.27 billion, but at least there's a little hope left that we can turn things around, if October beats expectations.
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It was a very good weekend at the box office, compared to the average for this time of year. None of the four wide releases were real bombs, although a couple opened soft, they were within the range of expectations. Also, The Lion King held on even better than expected leading the way for the second weekend in a row. This helped the film grow just over 16% from last weekend to $117 million. More importantly, the overall box office was close to 17% higher than this weekend last year. Not only did The Lion King top Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps's opening, so did Moneyball and Dolphin Tale. Year-to-date, 2011 is still behind 2010 by 4% at $7.85 billion to $8.14 billion, but a few more wins like this and that gap will start to close.
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In a surprisingly strong weekend for September, The Lion King will enjoy a second weekend at the top of the chart, although only by a narrow margin over new entries Moneyball and Dolphin Tale. Disney's animated classic will take in about $22 million this weekend, and now looks set to pass $400 million in lifetime domestic box office before its theatrical run is over, and it has a shot at topping Spider-Man to take a place in the all-time top 10.
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It's a busy week with four wide releases, including two that are opening at saturation level theater counts. With such a lot of competition, there's little chance all four will find a sizable audience this weekend. In fact, there's a chance none of them will be able to top The Lion King, leaving it on top for the second weekend in a row. If that happens, there's no telling how many classic films will get a 3D conversion. As for which release have the best shot at becoming the new box office king, Moneyball seems to be the consensus pick, but there is some debate as to how well the new releases will do. There's also some debate as to how well the overall box office will do compared to last year. There's a 50-50 chance the number one film this year will top Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, which earned just over $19 million last year, while the depth is a little better this year.
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After a strong start, August ended on a really low note, and that's bad news for September, as it means the positive momentum we had is gone. Looking at the upcoming month, there are 18 films opening wide over five weekends (including one re-release) but only four or five of them have a real shot at being midlevel hits, and it is unlikely that all of them will get there. Worse still, there are no films opening this month that look like they will match The Town, which made more than $90 million last September. In fact, the selection of releases is so weak that the film I'm most looking forward to is a limited release that has already come out on Video on Demand, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. (It has seventeen reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and still not a negative one among them.)
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Our DVD and Blu-ray sales estimates are based on weekly retail surveys, which we use to build a weekly market share estimate for each title we are tracking. The market share is converted into a weekly sales estimate based on industry reports on the overall size of the market, including reports published in Home Media Magazine.

For example, if our weekly retail survey estimates that a particular title sold 1% of all units that week, and the industry reports sales of 1,500,000 units in total, we will estimate 15,000 units were sold of that title. The consumer spending estimate is based on the average sales price for the title in the retailers we survey.

We refine our estimates from week to week as more data becomes available. In particular, we adjust weekly sales figures for the quarter once the total market estimates are published by the Digital Entertainment Group. Figures will therefore fluctuate each week, and totals for individual titles can go up or down as we update our estimates.

Because sales figures are estimated based on sampling, they will be more accurate for higher-selling titles.

Full financial estimates for this film, including domestic and international box office, video sales, video rentals, TV and ancillary revenue
are available through our research services. For more information, please contact us at research@the-numbers.com.